The Ghana Independent Broadcasters Association (GIBA) is set to establish a tower pack, an alternative power source, to give relief to media houses reeling under the current power crisis.

The initiative will house a central power plant to supply power to media outlets within a particular catchment area.

President of GIBA Akwasi Agyeman told Kumasi-based Luv FM that reliance on gen sets was killing the media industry.

Ghana is enduring a load shedding arrangement since 2012, forcing businesses to switch power supply to generators and power plants deemed expensive.

“Every day you have to be on gen set either at the transmission site or in the broadcast site…it is really affecting members,” he said.

His plan is to follow the innovation used in South Africa where all media houses rely on one company for its digital infrastructure.

 “If you go to South Africa for example, Sentech does all the transmission issues for broadcasting”, he said.

Sentech is a state-owned company that provides signal distribution services for most of the country’s broadcasters which include the public broadcaster, commercial and community broadcasters.

However, in Ghana, Akwasi Agyemang explained that different stations use about six generators to power transmission.

"If you go to Akowiase [a transmission site]  for example, you have Multimedia here, NET2 around there, eTV, Happy FM in the corner, CitiFM....whereas we could share resources. Currently we are using about six generators."

He said the Association is pushing for media owners to pool resources together to reduce production cost.

He did not give any deadline for the planned pooling of power resources.

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